Other Views: Blame for shutdown lies with GOP hardliners

As the government shutdown was approaching, many Americans did what comes naturally in matters regarding Washington: They ignored it, and assumed that the squabbling politicians would work things out at the last minute.

Now that the shutdown has gone into effect, many people are inclined toward a second default position: Blame everyone.

Both positions fit the dismally low view that Americans have for government in general, and Congress in particular.

In this case, however, the "they're all bums" reaction is off-base. This shutdown is not the result of the two parties acting equally irresponsibly. It is the product of an increasingly radicalized Republican Party, controlled by a deeply disaffected base that demands legislative hostage-taking in an effort to get what it has not been able to attain through the electoral process or the judiciary.

Republicans in the House are making demands that are both preposterous and largely unrelated to budgetary matters. In return for keeping government running (and, even more ominously, for paying its bills), they want President Obama to undermine the health care law that he ran on in 2008 and 2012, and now considers his signature domestic accomplishment.

No president of either party could accept that kind of badgering. No president should, as it would set a terrible precedent.

Today's Republican Party, prodded by outside interest groups threatening primary challenges to lawmakers deemed insufficiently conservative, has pushed out of the center and away from consensus-building. This migration began in the early 1990s when Newt Gingrich, a backbench bomb-thrower from Georgia, rose to the rank of Republican whip and later speaker of the House by preaching confrontation. And it gained even more momentum when Barack Obama's election in 2008 sparked the rise of the Tea Party movement.

Ending the shutdown will probably require House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to stand up to the Tea Party purists and allow the full House to vote on a "clean" bill to fund the government, without any amendments about ObamaCare. Whether and when Boehner will do so remains to be seen. In the meantime, if the shutdown drags on, the inconveniences pile up and the toll on the economy becomes more apparent, it's clear where the blame is properly laid.

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Other Views: Blame for shutdown lies with GOP hardliners

As the government shutdown was approaching, many Americans did what comes naturally in matters regarding Washington: They ignored it, and assumed that the squabbling politicians would work things out

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